Challenged by my girlfriend to write a book or pay $1000 https://medium.com/@flowen/lowens-book-what-the-hell-am-i-doing-a3af251e8102

Jun 30, 2016

Vee-arr higher higHER HIGHER

This is a bit of creative practice and a small homage to Haruki Murakami. My favourite writer.

Chatting away the night with your friends. Word by word. Time flows as it should.

Can’t see a star in the sky. Clouds are blocking the view and rain is starting to drop. It’s warm and cozy inside. You’re having a good time with your friends.

Then for a tiny moment you could feel it. As if something invisible tries to grab you. But was only able to hold on to a tiny thread. Then slips and lets go. Invisible to the naked eye, a single thread on your sweater has been pulled out a bit.

Again a touch so slight you ignore it. You continue chatting with your friends. The moment of touch was so fleeting, one could barely notice. More words are waiting in the seemingly endless queue and stories keep unfolding. You take a sip from your beer. Lips touch the glass and liquid streams into your mouth. Your taste buds are signalling your brain and your brain acknowledge the beer. Notably the alcohol. But your taste buds signal something else too. Something different. Like a drip of oil on a lake. You can’t see it - but something is off. The drip hides under foam of swirling streams as the lake mouths into a river and disappears just like that. Your brains are too slow to process what actually happened.

More words dissolve into the night. You’re happy and joyful. The jokes of your friends makes you laugh. There’s no denying this is reality. It all seems to be - in a way. Some messy plates with bits of food on it. Chicken bones, scraps of rice and sauce starting to stick to the plate. All evidence of what has happened so far.

But the drip of oil is growing. You stare at the beautiful Lake. It shows you what calmness and serenity is about. The Sun in the sky is sharing it’s warmth with you. A Mountain stares from across the lake, whispering ancient stories of strength and resilience. But even from afar you start to notice something is off. You can’t explain, but it is as if something chaotic contrasts with the calmness of the water. Something unexpected. You can’t make out whether it is good or bad. But it is different.

Slowly the words disappear. The queue of words is starting to empty.

No more words from your friend. Some of your friends show indecipherable behaviour. A slow disconnect from reality is starting to unfold. Like a storm starting to develop in the distance. From afar you can hear the rumble of thunder. Rain is slowly picking up. Winds are howling between the buildings.

It started slow and raised like a crescendo, but now suddenly you are in the middle of it. As if you were first inside the eye of a tornado, unable to see the edge. But now it surprised you and you fall into it. Losing sight of your friends, everyone is subjected to their own flight. You can still see the calm but you don’t have enough strength to return and so you let it blow you away. Further and further. You surrender to the storm. Your heart beating louder, overtaking other sounds around you. Like a bass drum it changed the other sounds into whistles. The loudness of the drums slowly increase as your thoughts race in a whirlpool.

If everything in this world is a scientific calculation, now everything seems uncalculated. On purpose. A divine moment. Sacred geometry is finally starting to crack. PI is showing the end of its tail. Rust appears on golden circles, displacing their geometrical beauty. A disfigured perfection. The fruits of the Gods never tasted this good. So we start to eat them.

Devouring the juices of the spirit. We run. Faster and faster. We run following the thunder. We run as the bass cracks through the sinuses of heaven as everything spins faster and faster as it runs out of control. Waves of sounds are trembling around us as we become flooded by anxiety. But it pumps us and it makes us wilder and hastier. Our own heartbeats are deafening us and we run faster than light. We travel through time. Chased by winds who can’t keep up. Visiting undiscovered planets. But we’ve seen it all before. The stars, the cosmos. What’s left to hide? Only within ourselves there is unexplored territory.

So we keep running. With force we dive through the water. The foam and bubbles surrounding us like a little cocoon. We burst out of it, because we cannot see. But now we panic, because we cannot breathe. The anxiety chokes us and we try to swim upwards, leaving our cocoons behind like a little shell of oxygen. The drumbeats vibrating through the water, you hear the dampened tones. You feel them. Just a few meters till you reach the surface. It feels like an eternity. The oceans struggling to drag you down. But there is no way they can hold you.

You come out of the water, blinded by fear.

Silence.

The only sound you hear is the one of breath.

Engulfing you as a mesh of white light. It seemingly protects us from the darkness surrounding. Still persisting, but slowly fading. Sound vibrations are dampening. The white light slowly moves around you with every breath. Breathing in, it contracts, coming closer. You feel its warmth and it makes you feel safe. Breathing out, its giving space. Calmness arrives. The storm outside is nothing but a small drizzle of water now. Clouds are clearing and stars become visible in the night’s sky.

Was it all real? You still have a slight taste of the forbidden fruits in your mouth. But it is dissipating fast. Faster than you want it too. But at the same time you are also relieved. Relieved that you can breath again. Breathing had never felt this good. Slowly, as if fading in, you hear the sounds of jazz coming up. You look at your friends in the room and no one is uttering a word. Everyone seems to slowly leave their own limbo and become aware of the music. Flickering candlelight brightens the room with a soft and warm yellow glow. It seems as if it was the only witness, slowly burning away.